Lanterns On The LakeBeings

Lanterns On The Lake return with Beings, an album that drives forward a little more directly, a little more forcefully, than some of their previous work. Their broad range of instrumentation feeds into vividly detailed song constructions: just the right number of textures to make each track something to explore. Released by Bella Union.

REVIEWS

Listening to 6 Music the other day between plays of the Guy Garvey album, mentions of the Guy Garvey album and Guy Garvey himself, on came a song that sat head and shoulders above the rest. It was ‘Faultlines’ the lead track from this third album from Whitley Bay’s finest Lanterns on the Lake.
It powers in and immediately satisfies, sounding somewhere between the acceptable side of Coldplay and a Geordie Mazzy Star with superbly evocative lyrics…Sample line… "Full-blooded, words like knives, but it’s not the same since the old girl died, you know, I used to see the city’s white glow from up here Oh my, look at all that rain, money’s tighter now and they keep us tame” I don’t know if it’s my North East upbringing and my love for it’s coastline and it’s tough rugged downs but this is moving me to tears. If the rest of the album had the same effect I’d now be sat in a puddle.
Elsewhere Lanterns of Lake have become very mature, very quickly. Opener ‘Of Dust and Matter’ combine Florence melodrama with Explosions in the Sky post rock sweepings, everything is slow paced and oh so melodramatic but Hazel Wilde’s lyrics regularly disarm. ’The Crawl’ and ’Send Me Home’ are both uber ballads - the first almost bluesy, the second piano led but neither are what personally I want to hear. No matter how hard they try, Lanterns on the Lake can’t get the post rock out of their system - even when being straightforward as on ’Through the Cellar Door’ they employ 65daysofstatic guitar pyrotechnics in lieu of giving us a chorus we can all hum.
As always with them it's well-produced and they do try to step away from their template on the Kid A-ish ’Stepping Down’ but by the end for anyone but post rocks obsessives and fans of melodrama you will have had your fill of haunting piano motifs and reverbed bowed guitars long ago. That all said, there is certainly a place for this grandiose emotional music on our sad winter playlists.